Mark Zuckerberg hits back at Tim Cook after Apple CEO criticises Facebook’s data collection
Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has pushed back against Apple CEO Tim Cook’s latest criticism of the social media giant, calling the critique “extremely glib and not aligned with the truth”. The comments come after Cook called out the Facebook’s business model as a scheme to monetise users.
Zuckerberg made the comments in an interview with Ezra Klein, co-founder of news site Vox. In a pointed exchange on an episode of Klein’s podcast, Zuckerberg said it was important for people not to let “the companies that work hard to charge you more convince you that they actually care more about you. Because that sounds ridiculous to me”.
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Cook’s lambasting of Facebook came during an interview on American news channel MSNBC, scheduled for broadcast this Friday. In the interview, Cook attacks Facebook’s business model, saying “we could make a ton of money if we monetised our customers. If our customers were our product. We’ve elected not to do that”.
For his part, Zuckerberg pointed to the fact that, unlike Apple products, which are among the most expensive on the market, Facebook offers its services free of charge. “If you want to build a service that helps connect everyone in the world, then there are a lot of people [who] can’t afford to pay,” he said. “And therefore, as with a lot of media, having an advertising-supported model is the only rational model.”
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Cook has made numerous criticisms of Facebook’s business model in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which revealed that the British consulting firm had harvested data from 50m Facebook users, and utilised it to try and influence the 2016 US election.
At a development forum in Beijing last week, Cook called for increased regulation of data collection, a demand he doubled down on in this latest interview. “I think the best regulation is no regulation, is self-regulation,” said Cook. “However, I think we’re beyond that here.”